Writing Quality Sales Letters
By Tiva Kelly
Marketing, in essence, is trying to get others to take a certain kind of action. As you promote your affiliate or other businesses, you will constantly engage in different types of marketing activities. Writing to promote your products and services is a marketing activity. With your writing, you seek to inform and persuade.
Your writing activities may include article writing for your article marketing campaigns. This platform is effective for establishing your website links. Combined with a good article distribution service this is a low-cost tool for building traffic.
However, your articles are more generic in tone and informational in nature. You do not typically have your salesperson hat on when it comes to creating articles. You pre-sell with articles to establish yourself as an authority in your niche market.
With sales letters you can ramp up the “sales language,” while still giving quality information. That’’s what a quality sales letter is, really. It’’s a tool to get readers to do something. They want to do this “something” because you gave them great information and inspired them.
Use sales letters to educate and motivate your target market to action. Send them in direct mail packages or via e-mail. Here are ways to construct quality sales letters.
Gain Your Audience’’s Attention
Start your sales letter off with an attention-getting headline. These can be brief. However, longer ones can be just as effective. Don”t be brief if it will take a few more words to convey the essence of what you”re offering. This headline can be at the top of a hard copy letter. It is usually the Subject Line of your e-mail campaign.
A catchy headline may be, “The Number One Secret about Multivitamins that No One Knows.” A reader will tend to read further because they want to know what this person knows that the rest of us don”t. They may investigate further out of skepticism. They may open because they want to know the secret. Regardless, they”re reading further to find out.
Define, Define
The next element in a quality sales letter is to define precisely the problem. Point out a problem that requires a solution. Here, you speak to a specific want or need of your niche market. The best affiliate marketers know their target market and speak to issues that concern them. Take time to research to understand whom you market to each week. This will help you design better sales letters.
Once you define a problem that your audience can identify with, offer your solution. However, you cannot just present a solution and then sign off your sales letter. You have to explain concisely why this solution is the best for the reader.
Take the multivitamins as an example. The problem you define may be that some multivitamins may contain insufficient amounts of Vitamin C. You offer your solution, your product, which contains healthy doses of Vitamin C. You explain why this is important from a health benefit and cost perspective. You may say there’’s no need to buy Vitamin C supplements on their own when taking your brand of vitamins. Problem defined, solution presented, and reasons why the solution is a good one.
Inspire Desire
Your next step in your sales letter is to build desire for the solution. Your audience may believe all you are saying so far from an intellectual point of view. You educated them and they believe you are 100 percent correct. They may decide to think about it and therefore put the direct mail letter back in the envelope. They may decide to click off the e-mail letter.
You don”t want this to happen. You want them to be excited about your affiliate product. Here, you offer them something. This may be a coupon, a discount code, or a product sample. You may also offer a free eBook or report on a topic related to your affiliate product.
Support what you offer with a customer testimonial or excerpt from a case study or report. You are offering an incentive to buy and presenting credible evidence on why they should buy. Customer testimonials are unbiased representations of your products.
Call to Action
Finally, motivate your sales letter readers” to take action of some sort. This may be to request a free EBook, order a free sample, or order the actual product. Whatever it is, you are asking them to further their business relationship with you. They may not buy right away from you but they may be in the process of buying from you. Marketing takes time and repeated efforts.
Put a P.S. in your sales letter as well. It gives a personal tone to the letter. It also reminds readers of your product offer. A P.S. reminds them about the benefits of taking action, before they click away.
Take the time to design quality sales letters. You will get better the more you practice this copywriting form. You will learn what works by the responses you receive. Concentrate your words on what your niche markets wants to hear. Now, get writing.
About The Author
Tiva Kelly is the Head of Article Coaching and offers advice to authors at
Article Marketer, a highly popular article distribution service. Learn how to market your small business by submitting articles through Article Marketer
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